Norm Macdonald's Dramatic Reading of "The Road Not Taken" as a Dead Man

2 years ago
12

Even though Norm has left us, I figured I could still use his voice to read some classic poetry. I had to edit different versions together to get anything good, but I was pretty impressed with the technology when I was done!

✝️ REST IN PEACE, NORM! 🐱‍👤
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Software used:
For the AI vocal, I used https://app.uberduck.ai/speak#mode=tts-basic.
I used the KineMaster app for video/audio.
The tracks vary a bit each time you have it read something on UberDuck, sometimes better than others. But, that gave me more to work with! So, I edited between 3 versions for better pronunciation and timing/cadence. He was also rushed, so I slowed it down a bit, and added spaces in between phrases to make it more natural.

I could have made it better and better if I just spent more time using different tracks and editing them in. Sometimes it takes a while to get it to just say some certain word properly. What I would often do is change the spelling, rather than wait for it to pronounce a good version of a word. For instance, it kept on mangling the word "diverged", and I ended up spelling it like "dye verged". It had a lot of trouble with the line "yet, knowing how way leads on to way", which I ended up having to spell like this: "yet, knowing how weigh leads on to whey" - seriously.

Sometimes, with some vocal models, it starts stuttering, and even sounding like it's having a seizure, grunting, weird stuff... and then it will inexplicably come back into the text right where it had gotten stuck into seizure mode. Scary, yet funny.

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